


back to the blue

by snazzyflower



Category: Red Dead Redemption (Video Games)
Genre: F/M, Siblings, i love mary and everyone else hates her :(, not beta'd as i'm sure you can tell but we die like men, slightly angsty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-28
Updated: 2020-02-28
Packaged: 2021-02-27 20:33:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,839
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22941820
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/snazzyflower/pseuds/snazzyflower
Summary: Mary and Jamie ride the train home after seeing Arthur in Valentine.(title from Roses Are Falling by Orville Peck)
Relationships: Mary Gillis Linton/Arthur Morgan
Comments: 6
Kudos: 40





	back to the blue

**Author's Note:**

> takes place immediately after the mission "we loved once and true". being the hopeless romantic that I am, I think mary and arthur's relationship is so interesting (even though 90% of people just hate her lol) and they absolutely deserved to be together.
> 
> anyway! title is from roses are falling by orville peck, who speaks to my romantic cowboy soul. it's definitely a mary x arthur song; I highly suggest listening

…She shakes her head.

“Oh, you’ll never change. I know that.” She means it more to herself than him, but he looks down at his feet anyway. Mary curses herself. How could she forget the way he’d always taken her words so deeply to heart?

She means to say something else, anything- hell, she has half a mind to throw herself off the train and into his arms. But the whistle was blowing and the engine was starting and somehow the train was moving and it breaks her heart all over again. With a deep exhale, she turns into the train car and takes her seat beside Jamie.

She knows he’s standing on the platform just outside the window, but she can’t bring herself to look out at his face, sullen as it was and drifting away from her once again.

 _Ever the coward, Mary Gillis,_ she thinks to herself.

“I’d missed him more than I thought,” Jamie says.

“Hm?” Mary looks at her brother. He’s looking away from her, eyes trained on the window, looking wistful.

“Arthur,” Jamie says, turning to her. “I’d missed him, all this time.” She watches as he shakes his head, expecting to see his hair falling into his eyes and instead seeing an awful ‘do shorn close to his scalp. It made her heart hurt. He’d always been so insistent on letting his hair grow wild, much to her father’s irritation. Daddy always said it made him look uncivilized, but Mary thought it reminded her of the way Arthur had always worn his hair.

Lost in her thoughts as she was, she almost misses when Jamie adds, “I was, well. I was just a boy when I saw him last, ’s all.”

The shattered remains of Mary’s heart break a bit further. One of the great guilts of her life was tearing Arthur, the man her baby brother had always needed, away from him.

And all for what?

She was certain it was a sin that would drag her straight to hell with it’s weight.

“Oh, Jamie, I know,” she says instead, unable to voice the extent of her heartbreak. She was very used to suppressing her feelings regarding Arthur Morgan and what he meant to her, though she found it was a bit harder after seeing him so recently. “I’ve missed him too.”

The marks Arthur Morgan had left with her remained, after all these years. She’d only ever been able to hide them, but they'd never healed in earnest. Honestly, Mary was unsure she'd be able to keep herself from digging her fingers in and tearing it back open. The pain of her loss meant that she remembered their time together. 

Wrapping her arms around Jamie's right one, she leans into his shoulder. “What a mess.” Mary relaxes as she feels the train rumble and bump beneath them. It is so very like sitting astride a horse, if horses were giant and metal and filled your lungs with awful coal.

“So you wrote to him, then?” Jamie says, turning towards her in full and grabbing her hand. He gives it a good squeeze.

“Of course I did. Jamie, I’d missed you so, and I didn’t-“

He cuts her off. “Oh Mary, none of that now,” he says. He’s teasing her, she knows, but his voice is full of warmth. Oh, did she miss her baby brother. How she feared something would happen to him. “You know, the Chelonians say that…”

His voice begins to fade out as Mary looks at the scenery passing by. They’re some ways east of Valentine now, heading into the remaining hills and valleys before the horrible swampland of Lemoyne. There's nothing particularly interesting about this open country, really, but all her time spent with Arthur made the area quite familiar. Some of her fondest memories were hidden in those plains, days wasted away with Arthur and his beloved Boadicea…

She squeezes her eyes shut against the memories. She can only allow herself small, small doses of those happy times, lest she fall back in completely. She’s not sure she’d find her way out a second time.

“-Mary? Mary,” Jamie says, shaking her out of her head. “I think I lost you there for minute..”  
  
“I’m sorry Jamie, I was listenin’, truly, I just- well, we passed through some area I’m familiar with, is all. It had me thinking.”

Mary watches the grin grow on her brother’s face like a flower. “Thinking about a tall, handsome, rugged cowboy?” he says, raising his eyebrows.   
  
“Jamie!” she exclaims. He dodges her swatting hand with a laugh and leans back into his seat again.

“Well?” Jamie asks. When she doesn’t immediately respond, his eyes widen. “I’ll be, Mary, that is what you were thinking about! Though, I suppose, when are you not thinking about him, really- ow!”

Mary gets him that time.

“Of course I was thinking about him, you dolt, we just saw him.” Mary says, folding her arms.  
  
“But are you two…” Jamie trails off. Mary raises an eyebrow at him in response. He rolls his eyes. “Are you two, you know, sweet on one another again?”

Mary closes her eyes and leans her head back on the seat. “Jamie, it’s not so simple as that.”  
  
He makes an offended noise. “What do you mean, not so simple? I didn’t ask you some profound, Earth-shattering question.”

She sighs. “It’s just that, well, it’s not that I ever stopped loving him,” she says. Her eyes are closed still, but now she can’t help but see his heartbroken face all over again, can’t stop reliving the moment they’d turned away from each other. Mary opens her eyes and turns to face Jamie, who has confusion painted on his face.

“Oh, Jamie, its all far too complicated, you know that.”

His face falls a bit, and Mary can’t say she blames him. “Yeah, yeah, I know. I just thought that, well. Anyway, Arthur already said no-“

“You and Arthur spoke of our- of us?” Mary’s shocked. “Well, what did he say, then?”  
  
Jamie blinks. “Well, I asked if you two were sweet on one another again, that’s all. And he said no, and when I asked why, he said it was because you two were different people now, but then I said you both were the same as you’d always been, and he agreed with me, so-“ her brother stops to take a breath, realizing he’d been rambling. “Well. You know the rest, I imagine.”

 _We’re exactly the same as we’d always been._ Mary thinks Arthur’d been exactly right about that.  
  
“Oh Jamie,” she says, leaning her head against his shoulder once more. “I miss him so.”  
  
“I know you do, Mary,” he says, his voice soft. “If not for our father, do you think-“

“Our father is a drunken imbecile, and I berate myself for not seeing it sooner,” Mary says with no small amount of distaste. Her father had always been of a sort, the drink holding on to him something awful, but in recent days he’d added gambling and whoring into the mix. She’d never been so disgusted with another person in her life. 

“You sound just like him, you know that?” Jamie says with a laugh.

“Like who, Daddy? Daddy doesn’t know big words like imbecile, Jamie, you know that-“

“No, no. You sound like Arthur.” Mary gapes a bit, and looks up at him. “He said something like that on our way back to you about father, though I reckon his words were a bit nicer than yours,” he says, knocking his shoulder against hers. “Never thought I’d see the day.”  
  
“Did you hit him?” Mary asks her brother.

“What?”  
  
“Arthur Morgan. Did you hit him for what he said about father?”  
  
Jamie shakes his head. “No, but I told him he oughtn’t speak like that about him.”

Mary grins. “Mm. Good. You’re a wimp, though.”

“Mary!” His eyes are wide with shock. “I told him off! What do you want from me?”  
  
“You should’ve hit him,” Mary says, shrugging. “I can say those things about Daddy. Arthur Morgan can’t, though I can’t say he’s wrong with what he says.” _Besides, Lord knows he’ll say it anyway,_ she thinks.

Jamie scoffs. “I’m not hitting Arthur Morgan. We’re talking about the same man, right? Tall, tall guy, shoulders twice as broad as mine, gunslinger-outlaw type?”

Mary grins. “Of course, and ten times as handsome as any man I’d ever seen in the picture shows.”

Jamie looks at her blankly. “And you wanted me. Jamie Gillis. To hit him. Arthur Morgan.”

“Of course I did. As I said, you’re a wimp for not doing so.”  
  
“Mary! You should hit him then, if you’re so tough.”  
  
Mary fully laughs at that. “Well, I used to. Reckon I’d done it a hundred times. You could’ve done it once, Jamie, really.” At the look on his face she laughs again.  
  
“You? I- well, I mean- how!” he stutters. His utter disbelief sends Mary into a fit.

“Well, as for Arthur, he ain’t as big and scary as his likes to appear. As for the how-“ she hits him, none too softly, on his arm.

“Ow! Mary!”

“Oh, hush. That was for Arthur, of course, but seeing as he’s not here, I hit you instead. Now you know how to do it next time you see him!”  
  
He gives her a look. “Are we expecting to see him again soon?”

Her laughter trails off. “Oh Jamie, I don’t know. We’ll see where life takes the two of us, I suppose. Maybe our paths will cross again soon.”  
  
“You two always seemed to have a talent for coming back to each other, that’s for sure.” Jamie says sagely. She chuckles, feeling exhausted suddenly.

Her voice is soft and thoughtful. “I suppose we do. It’s always been like that, though, you know.” 

Jamie wraps his arm around her shoulder and brings her in. She sighs.

“So, what else did you and Mr. Morgan discuss on your ride?”  
  
“Oh, well, Arthur told me I should work at an apple farm.”

“I think that’s called an orchard, Jamie. And anyway, why did he tell you to work there?”

“Because he asked me what I liked, and I told him I liked apples. So he said I should do something I like doing, which could be growing apples. Though I’m not sure that sounds very interesting, if I’m being honest.”

Last Arthur had seen Jamie, he’d been but a boy. So young, without the worries of adulthood and purpose and greater meaning. Now, he’d met a young man, and despite all the nonstop worries and troubles that plagued him constantly, he tried to give her brother advice on how to be happy.

_Oh, Arthur Morgan, you silly fool. I think I’d die for you a million times over, with how much you mean to me._

“You know,” Mary says, smiling at Jamie. She's so, so tired, and blames her wet eyes on that. “Apple orchards sound lovely.”


End file.
